Laravel Deployment & Server Management Blog

Laravel Reverb's New Database Driver: Real-Time WebSockets Without Redis

Laravel 13 added a database scaling driver to Reverb, so you can run multi-process WebSockets without Redis. We cover how it works, when to use it, and the full production setup: Supervisor, Nginx TLS, file descriptors, and monitoring.

Sameh Elhawary · Aug 03, 2026 · 20 min read

Laravel 13's First-Party JSON:API Support: Standards-Compliant APIs Without Packages

Laravel 13 ships first-party JSON:API support: resource classes that handle serialization, sparse fieldsets, relationship inclusion, and pagination links automatically. Here's how the new classes work, when to migrate from classic API Resources, and how to run a compliant API in production.

Sameh Elhawary · Aug 02, 2026 · 21 min read

You Don't Need Kubernetes for Your Laravel App

A team of 8 spent 60 hours a week maintaining Kubernetes before moving to Docker Compose. For Laravel apps, the case against k8s is even stronger. Here's the boring architecture that actually works, and the rare cases where k8s earns its keep.

Sameh Elhawary · Jul 16, 2026 · 14 min read

Deploying AI-Powered Laravel Apps: Queues, Streaming, Timeouts

LLM calls run 30-120 seconds and break every default your Laravel server ships with. Queue and Horizon configuration, Nginx streaming, end-to-end timeout budgets, retry safety, and cost tracking for AI workloads in production.

Sameh Elhawary · Jul 16, 2026 · 16 min read

Your Deploy Pipeline Is an Attack Surface

In May 2026, 700+ compromised Laravel-Lang package versions shipped a credential stealer through Composer. Here's how to harden your Laravel deploy pipeline: --no-scripts, allow-plugins, lockfile discipline, scoped deploy keys, and a full incident checklist.

Sameh Elhawary · Jul 16, 2026 · 17 min read

Cloud Repatriation for Laravel: From AWS to a $10 VPS

37signals saved ~$10M leaving AWS, and 86% of CIOs plan to pull workloads back. Here's what your EC2 + RDS + NAT + egress bill really buys a Laravel app, the VPS architecture that replaces it, and a step-by-step migration playbook with a safe DNS cutover.

Sameh Elhawary · Jul 15, 2026 · 16 min read

FrankenPHP in Production on a Plain VPS: The Real Setup

A hands-on guide to running FrankenPHP with Laravel Octane on a plain Ubuntu VPS: installation, a production systemd unit, the Nginx handoff, worker mode gotchas, and the cases where PHP-FPM is still the right call.

Sameh Elhawary · Jul 15, 2026 · 16 min read

SQLite in Production for Laravel: When One File Wins

The honest guide to running SQLite in production for Laravel: the WAL config that matters, backups that don't corrupt, Litestream replication, the atomic-deploy gotcha, and the signals that it's time to move to MySQL or Postgres.

Sameh Elhawary · Jul 15, 2026 · 14 min read

Upgrading to Laravel 13 in Production with Zero Downtime

A production playbook for upgrading to Laravel 13 without downtime: PHP pre-flight checks, Composer strategy, additive migrations, atomic symlink deploys, worker restarts, and a rollback plan that actually works.

Sameh Elhawary · Jul 14, 2026 · 15 min read

Migrating Laravel from Railway, Render, or Fly.io to a VPS

A step-by-step runbook for moving a Laravel app off Railway, Render, or Fly.io onto your own VPS: env export, database migration, cutover, rollback plan, and a before/after cost comparison.

Sameh Elhawary · Jul 14, 2026 · 16 min read

The New Laravel Forge, Nine Months Later: An Honest Review

Forge 2.0 shipped zero-downtime deploys by default, a $6/mo Laravel VPS, and Organizations. Nine months on, here's an honest practitioner's review: what genuinely improved, where the fine print bites, and how it reshapes the Forge-alternative decision.

Sameh Elhawary · Jul 14, 2026 · 12 min read

Laravel Cloud's $5 Plan vs a $5 VPS: The Real Cost Math

Laravel Cloud's new $5 Starter tier with scale-to-zero hibernation sounds like it kills the $5 VPS. We run the honest 12-month cost math for a real Laravel app, queues, scheduler, database and all, and show exactly where each option wins.

Sameh Elhawary · Jul 14, 2026 · 13 min read